The Care and Keeping Of
by Le Penguin
Summary: The Stork has terrible customer service and left a newborn in the care of a bunch of lunatics. Chaos ensues.


It had been a normal Guardian meeting: the customary Easter-versus-Christmas fight had broken out between North and Bunny, Tooth was rattling off flight redirection plans to compensate for the coming monsoon season, Sandy had eggnogged himself into a pleasantly drunken coma and was floating aimlessly around the room, and Jack had absconded altogether to raid the kitchen pantry.

"—and spring rites can be found in nearly every culture on earth, something that can't be said for your over-commercialized excuse for a winter festival, and if we want to drag religion into this, the major religion out of which we're currently based _clearly_ places my holiday as the more theologically relevant."

North stroked his beard, contemplating Bunny's words. Then he shrugged.

"When you have hundreds of movies to your name, then we talk."

Bunny's retort likely would have involved a boomerang or four to the head, had an interruption not arrived in the form of a giant bird crashing in through the window. It shook itself off, and waddled over to North.

"Wack-wark," it squawked, gesturing with its long beak to the bundle strapped to its back.

North stared, speechless. The bird grew agitated at the lack of action, and jabbed him impatiently in the knee, gesturing again at the bundle, and then at the device strapped to its neck. Curiously, North detached the device, and read aloud the text on its screen.

"'Congratulations from the Stork on your new bundle of joy! Please sign the screen and tip your deliverybird. For customer service inquiries or complaints, please dial the number below on your magical telepathic moon-crystal. And remember: if you didn't want to see us, you should've wrapped it!'"

"Wark," agreed the deliverybird.

North was flabbergasted. "Why—I will have you know that no one here ordered any baby today! There must be some kind of mistake - "

The deliverybird rolled its eyes, as if it'd heard the excuse a million times. It tapped the device in North's hands with its beak, bringing up a map that displayed a drop-off location squarely at North's factory.

North bristled. "Now, see here, overgrown turkey - "

The deliverybird fluffed up its feathers right back at North and gave a loud, barking squawk. While the sight of North staring down a giant bird wearing a postal delivery uniform was quite amusing, Bunny decided a fight would not be the wisest of solutions – especially if that bird did in fact have a baby in that pouch. Bunny darted a look at Tooth.

"Oi, you understand that terrible cackling any?"

Tooth shrugged helplessly. "I haven't had any experience with non-tropical birds in years. Maybe we should just sign off on the delivery for now and call that customer service line. The fairies are telling me the Stork's assistants aren't known for being the most reasonable…"

One of Tooth's mini-fairies was in the deliverybird's face, chittering angrily. The deliverybird let out an indignant honk. The mini-fairy hissed and fluffed up her feathers, resembling an iridescent winged kooshball.

"Reasonable, huh…" Bunny echoed.

North angrily scrawled his name on the device's screen, and threw it at the deliverybird's feet. "You will be hearing from us shortly, I will have you know. For now, we will have the baby in safe-keeping."

The deliverybird harrumphed and detached the bundle from its back, handing it to North with its beak. It spun on his heel, fluffing up its tail feathers primly, and flew gracefully out the hole in the window that it had created upon entry.

There was a full five seconds of silence before the bundle started to wail hysterically.

North pressed his fingers to his temples, walking over to the aforementioned moon-crystal. "I will make call to friend well-versed in turkey-speak, and we proceed from there."

Having large, sensitive ears was not a blessing in situations such as these. Bunny began to reel from the horrible shrieking.

"Crikey, what does it want?" Bunny moaned.

Tooth, wincing herself, sent a few fairies over to lift and rock the bundle gently. Now it was screaming and in motion, which was not strictly an improvement.

"I…I never was very experienced with children at this age," Tooth admitted. "They're a little eerie at this point, honestly. I mean, no teeth yet, all that blank gum…"

The screaming had been replaced with sticky-sounding chewing. They looked to see Jack feeding the baby peanut butter straight from the jar, with his hands. Bunny scowled at him.

"D'ya really think peanut butter's good for a baby, mate?"

Jack shrugged and scooped out a handful of peanut butter for himself. "I dunno, it seemed hungry. Where'd you get a baby, anyway?"

Bunny's hackles bristled. "A giant bird dropped it out of the bloody sky! Where do you think we got it from?"

Jack stopped cleaning the peanut butter from his fingers in mid-lick. "…going to assume that not sarcasm. What're you gonna do with it, in any case?"

The baby started wailing again, and Jack moved to feed it more peanut butter. Bunny stomped over to slap his hand away.

"You're gonna give it the runs if you keep stuffing it full of that! And wash your hands first, for bloody sakes."

A shush of wings set the group on edge once more. More storks? Bearing more babies? Thankfully, this was not the case – a large goose glided gracefully into the room from the skylight, carrying a woman in a cheerful sunhat, and a young, luminous man in armor. North clasped his hands together, giving a loud sigh of relief.

"Katherine, my dear, my thanks for coming on such short notice. Please do tell me that you are knowledgeable of Stork."

Katherine accepted North's kisses on her cheeks. "I don't mind at all, especially in emergencies. Kailash will be helping out with Stork; mine is a little rusty."

Kailash gave a massive honk, and waddled over to the moon-crystal, ready and raring for a fight through the jungles of automated customer service lines.

"Considering the situation, I asked Nightlight to tag along. I don't need to tell you how good he is with babies."

And indeed, Nightlight had already settled himself on the floor, rocking the little bundle gently, humming an aimless tune. The mini-fairies, relieved of their rocking duties, decided to reward themselves for a job well done by burrowing under Jack's sweatshirt. Jack appeared to be used to this kind of thing, and didn't even flinch. Jack scooped more peanut butter into his mouth, and gave a wave as he walked out of the room.

"Call me in when the kid's old enough to build a snowman; I'm gonna go smear this stuff on the elves."

Bunny was about to stalk after him for a good shouting fit about responsibility, but grudgingly noted that, with Nightlight on baby-wrangling duty and Kailash cursing out the Stork customer service line (good lord, did that bird have a colorful vocabulary! Bunny knew enough bird-language from his egg-collecting days to recognize the string of curses spilling from her beak, and could have assumed from Katherine's beet-red face regardless), there wasn't much for the rest of them _to _do aside from wait.

Of course, such a comment really was just tempting fate.

A foul smell wafted through the air.

Nightlight's eyes widened, and he made a wordless noise. His eyes fell on Katherine, confused and helpless. Katherine rubbed a hand over her face, groaning as she sorted out the panicked gibberish Nightlight was projecting into her head.

"He says he's never done this part before. He always just handed the Man in the Moon off to the nursing bots for cleaning."

The wailing started up again, and no amount of rocking and cooing from Nightlight would staunch it. Katherine scanned the crowd for help.

"…anyone here know how to clean a diaper?" she asked.

Tooth took one look at the gaping wet toothless hole from which the screams were emanating, and gave a shudder. "I'll…I'll go boil some water…"

She zipped out the door, retching. Nightlight was discovering, to his confusion, that his ace-in-the-hole babysitting trick (floating overhead while rotating slowly and blinking his light on and off) did not resolve the issue of having a diaper full of feces. Out of ideas, he slumped to the ground, light dim, defeated.

Bunny and North met each other's gaze, their eyes full of grim resolve. It was time to set their differences aside and step up to the challenge. Where others failed or fled, they would march on, and slay the savage poopy diaper beast. It was their time. Their time, now or never, to prove themselves as –

The screaming had stopped. Bunny and North, shocked out of their reverie, glanced over to see Pitch pinning the baby into a fresh diaper and clean snuggie, and popping a pacifier into its mouth – like a cherry finisher on a sundae. The baby cooed happily, and closed its eyes to drift into sleep. Sandy supervised, scrutinized the dream forming over the baby's head, and nodded in satisfaction.

Pitch disintegrated the dirty diaper into black sand, and slanted a look in Bunny and North's direction. "Do stop your hemming and hawing, gentlemen. It's just a diaper, for goodness' sake."

North sputtered. "Pitch – you – how did you get into my factory?"

Sandy brandished a cellphone crafted from sand. He pointed at it, then Pitch.

Katherine cleared her throat. "He…does have experience with children," she said, softly.

Pitch rocked the child easily in one arm, easily dodging Nightlight's half-hearted, petulant swipe at his ankle. "If you are all quite done running around in aimless panic, do go and fetch some milk and mashed vegetables from your vast pantry, North. She will likely be hungry after her nap."

"'She'?" echoed North.

Pitch cast him a withering glare. "Do tell me that you bothered to find out the child's _gender_ before signing up to be her guardian."

North grumbled and stalked off to the kitchens. Kailash gave one last, triumphant honk, thumping Katherine on the back excitedly with her wing. Katherine sighed in relief.

"Sounds like Kailash got things sorted out with the Stork," she said. "It seems as though there was a small mix-up with delivery. That baby was supposed to go to Illinois, you see, and vice-versa with the yeti baby that's there. The delivery team is doing some damage control work in getting the yeti baby out from under the nose of all the paparazzi, and will be up to make the switch by tonight."

"Something of a pity," Pitch said, watching as the baby's hand curled around his finger. "While I am certainly glad she is being delivered to more capable parents, I would have dearly loved to watch you have to deal with the terror and destruction a toddler can bring."

Jack wandered into the room, now bearing a jar of nutella. "Ran out of peanut butter; what'd I miss?"

"Pitch, delivering us from poopy knickers," Bunny sighed, leaving to follow North to the kitchens. "As if this day wasn't humiliating enough. I'll be chopping veg for the wee one's supper, if anyone needs me."

Jack paused, fingers in his mouth, contemplating Pitch and his involvement in preventing baby-Armageddon. Somewhat begrudgingly, he offered the rest of his nutella as thanks. Pitch graciously declined the half-eaten jar.

"Count it as a favor owed," Pitch said, finally. (He could not quite hide his interest in the curl of Jack's tongue as he licked his fingers clean – he was, despite his greatest efforts, still just a man.) "And do promise that, in the future, you'll call me first before coating the child in peanut butter and letting her stew in her own waste."

Jack shrugged and crossed his heart. The peanut butter part sounded like one hell of a party, if you asked him.


End file.
